Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Gifted Development Center reviews?

My daughter had a full evaluation done by a local psychologist who is not a gifted specialist. The recommendations in the report were very generic. Has anyone used Gifted Development Center, or a similar organization? Bonus points if you used their services remotely.

What's the process like? What kinds of recommendations do they give? Was it worth it?

We used one of the psychologists on the Hoagies Gifted page.

http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/psychologists.htm

We did an initial meeting with me and my spouse, then WPPSI-IV testing on a different day, and then a follow up meeting to go over results (including school recommendations). It was very helpful.

Was your local psychologist a neuropsychologist evaluation or testing for gifted only? Were tests included in addition to ability and achievement testing? I think it must have been a more global eval based on your other post with diagnoses.

We considered having our 2e ds evaluated by either GDC or another professional with experience with gifted children after his initial diagnosis by a neuropsych, and we did talk to the GDC staff via email about our ds, but ultimately decided not to pursue an evaluation that far away from home. After thinking through everything, we didn't feel that it would add any signficant knowledge that we didn't already have, and wasn't worth the $... but that was just for our one specific child. I also felt that it was easy to predict some of what the GDC would say based on material available online and in the book that LS wrote.

You mention your local psychologist gave only generic recommendations - have you tried to put the recommendations in place and how did it work out? We also have a relatively "short" report from our neuropsych eval compared to what I've read others have on this forum, and the recommendations are fairly generic for the challenges our ds has... but otoh... they were great recommendations and were quite likely what any other psych would have recommended.

We also found that investing our eval $ locally was helpful in that our psychologists had knowledge of our local schools - while a psychologist elsewhere might be able to give general recommendations about the type of learning environment that might be best for a specific child, they don't have local knowledge such as how individual schools actually function (vs how they are advertised) or attitude of staff to accommodations etc. We also found that our school district personnel were much more willing to accept recommendations by local psychologists than they would have been willing to accept a diagnosis from out-of-state that had the appearance we'd "shopped" for it.

Hope that doesn't sound discouraging - it's not meant to be!

Best wishes,

polarbear

ps - we would have considered one of the pyschs on the Hoagies list, but there weren't any listed in our area.

I'm interested in this thread because we are considering having DS5 with DCD tested next year, and are considering traveling for it. There is a Hoagies listed tester in my area but I have trepidation about it because (1) the wording on their website makes me viscerally uncomfortable, as it seems to emphasize grades and test scores over a happy healthy child, and (2) I have been warned about some possible issues from clinicians I trust.
I'm concerned about misdiagnosis if I use a local tester who is not used to 2e kids.
So, to broaden the OPs initial question, what centers or individuals have/would you travel to see? I'm hoping that if the answer doesn't specify whether you DID travel, it won't unmask your location.

Twelve years ago I had a phone consultation with Bobbie Gilman at the GDC. She reviewed my son's IQ and achievement scores from a school evaluation where he was determined to be "average but slow." I was worried that she would think I was nuts to think he was gifted, considering the double digit IQ score. But she didn't. Instead, she pointed out that his pattern of strengths and weaknesses was consistent with 2E issues and suggested additional evaluations that we could pursue.

That conversation was a turning point in how I understood my son and in my approach to his difficulties. A few years later, after many therapies and much remediation, he was evaluated again and found to have a GAI approaching the HG range and dyslexia.

I will be forever grateful to Ms. Gilman for her ability to see a clear picture of my son through a mire of average and low average scores when no one else could and for communicating that clarity to me. I suspect that my son would be on a different path today if she had not.

That said, there has been some controversy surrounding the GDC and its founder over the years that you may want to research before committing to an evaluation with them.

I'm glad it was such a positive experience for your family. Do you have a link regarding the controversy? I'm totally clueless about it.

We were referred to the tester because DD's psychologist thought some of her behaviors might be on the spectrum. She had WISC, CARS, and BASC. The tester wasn't a gifted specialist.

The generic recommendations were things like, "give her higher level reading material" and "let her move around." It wasn't more specific than that, and most of the things were things we were already doing.

Our area just doesn't have professionals dedicated to gifted kids. This evaluator recommended trying the obvious: a private school, homeschool, or a gifted program. She also recommended a gifted school, which DD ended up at, but it abruptly closed its doors after 6 months. Beyond that one school, she didn't recommend specific schools, so her "local expertise" is pretty much nonexistent in our case. And our local school system was unimpressed with the fact that we went outside the school system at all for testing.

Thanks for sharing your experiences. It's awesome that your school was willing to work with you. I really wish there was a local resource for us, but there just isn't anyone.

This may refer to:
1) Visual-Spatial, as exemplified by several old posts... here, here, and here.
Anecdotal evidence is based on observation and experience; Empirical evidence is based on the results of scientific research.
2) Justin Chapman, as described in this 2002 article, and this old discussion thread.

Dr. Linda Silverman is well-respected and has helped many gifted kids and their families.

Silverman is also a contributing author to this book on asynchronous development.

Also, issues surrounding indigo children, recommending vision therapy, and using the SB L-M.

I, personally, find Dr. Silverman's take on giftedness and gifted children and their needs to be right on, but, it is not evident to me that she is well respected by experts in her own field. Her views on giftedness run counter to the eminence model that is fairly well entrenched these days, and at least from what I've seen (which is quite a bit--I've been working on a master's degree in gifted ed for the past two years), her work is rarely cited in the literature.

I'll join lurumom in asking for links on the controversies you mention.

Although eminence may now be entrenched as a result of teaching this concept for several years, there was quite a bit of controversy when the concept of eminence was added to the definition of giftedness: A small roundup of counterpoints to this include:
- Defining giftedness as based on performance tends to exclude or ignore 2e.
- Is an individual gifted throughout the lifespan, or does one fail to be gifted if talents are directed to endeavors which may be personally fulfilling but do not lead to prominence...? For example, non-competitive... service orientated... reserved individuals... introverts... shunning the spotlight.
- Equating giftedness with eminence may conflate giftedness with opportunity.
- Are talents ever "fully developed"?
- Common core may be at odds with having eminence as the chief goal of gifted education; The high-stakes testing and data-collection ushered in by Common Core have a goal of "equal outcomes"; US government school teachers are evaluated on closing achievement gaps and excellence gaps, which may often entail capping the growth of children at the top.

Literature generally tends to cite Empirical evidence, not Anecdotal evidence?